


Admirer

by Maiden_of_Asgard



Category: Prospect (2018)
Genre: F/M, Secret Admirer, Tumblr Ask Box Fic, Valentine's Day Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 10:35:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29434707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maiden_of_Asgard/pseuds/Maiden_of_Asgard
Relationships: Ezra (Prospect 2018)/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	Admirer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thebakerstboyskeeper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebakerstboyskeeper/gifts).



Invariably, when he found a world teeming with the promise of riches, Ezra would almost immediately encounter other eager prospectors who’d come for the harvest. Staying ahead of the throngs who pushed ever-further into the wilds of the Reach in search of fortune - or to escape misfortune - was no easy feat. The latest forest moon he’d set out to plunder was blissfully quiet when he first arrived, however, and within the first few months, he’d begun to believe that he’d simply happened upon a source of blue moon-pearls that everyone else had somehow missed. 

Loneliness was its own burden, of course. Ezra comforted himself with the thought of what his life would be like once he’d become fabulously wealthy and retired to some exquisite, high-rise penthouse on Central.  _ Or, more suitable, perhaps, a manor on some picturesquely pastoral world in the Inner Ring.  _ He would surround himself with an entourage of beautiful, elegant poets and musicians, ever-loquacious and charming, alike with the patron-kings of bygone days.  _ Wine, women, and song.  _ Such thoughts comforted him on the worst of days, when endless solitude seemed to steal the wit and witticism even from his own mind. 

The task of harvesting itself was slow and tedious. Blue moon-pearls were a modest prize, relative to some of the rhizomically-derived gemstones in the Reach, but they were easier to harvest and transport, and small enough that a single man might easily haul great quantities of them through the thick wilderness with no assistance. That was key, as Ezra had given up on the notion of enlisting a partner for any of his endeavors; the men and women encountered out in the Reach simply weren’t to be trusted. 

He should know. _He_ certainly wasn’t to be trusted. 

Months into his self-imposed isolation, however, he made a grim discovery. 

He wasn’t alone.

He hadn’t seen the pod land, and he’d yet to find it, but he’d picked up a brief burst of static on his comm one morning, right after sunrise. His hackles raised the moment he heard it; he had company. The moon’s flora and fauna were troublesome enough, but another human? Inauspicious.

He kept his thrower closer when he slept at night. He didn’t mind shooting and killing if he had to, and he wasn’t about to let so many months of labor go to waste. It took him several days to locate the newcomer’s camp. Hiding in the thick forest foliage, he was stunned to discover that the new resident of his lonesome moon was a solitary woman, slight in stature, but wearing a knife and holster on her belt. He waited and watched from a distance until he was satisfied that she truly was alone, then retreated to his territory to continue the search for clusters of pearls. 

Ezra expected, as one would, that more ships or pod-drops were incoming; from his cursory surveillance efforts, the newcomer did not seem to be well-acquainted with the harshness of life in the wilderness, though he knew she had to have an inquiring and stubborn nature, or she wouldn’t be on his moon at all. However, days passed, and no one else appeared. The woman kept her distance, though he felt her watching him through the forest during the days, and he often saw signs of her poking around the sites he’d been harvesting when he returned to them after a night away. Ezra left her be, but his days and nights were filled with constant tension.

It was in a state of such tension that he nearly walked right into one of the moon’s many pockmarks, a narrow hole in the matted roots and earth that almost certainly held a few choice specimens of the massive, surface-averse serpents that waited for their prey to come to them. 

The viper-pit was deep and half-hidden by massive fallen leaves. If he hadn’t seen a deer stumble into a similar pit several weeks ago, he probably wouldn’t have noticed it at all. Ezra drummed his fingers on the holster of his thrower, considering the fortuitous opportunity that had just presented itself. 

He knew, without even a measure of doubt, that the newcomer had been stalking his tracks and trying to use all of his scouting to her own advantage. The pit-vipers could cloak from bio-scans; Ezra would be shocked if she knew they existed at all, and he was absolutely certain that she didn’t know to keep an eye out for them. He could, theoretically, feign interest in an imaginary pearl cache near the pit. When she snuck up to poke around his dig during the dark of night… 

Well, he wouldn’t have to worry about her interloping any longer. And, it wasn’t as if he’d be the one  _ doing _ anything. He’d simply be sitting back and leaving it all to chance. That was a fair deal for her, wasn’t it?  _ Reasonably _ honorable?

Being unreasonably honorable, in his extensive experience, made occupations such as his own far too dangerous. He didn’t intend to underestimate her; she didn’t have to be big or strong to pull a trigger and shoot him in the back. 

He kicked a loose pebble into the pit and watched it plummet into darkness. Even if the vipers didn’t kill her, the fall would. 

Ezra sighed. He found a suitably-pointed stick around a meter in length and stabbed it into the soil, affixing his red-checkered handkerchief around the top of it. 

* * *

Sleep came easily that night. Tucked away in his pod with his kettle and books, Ezra could distract him from the fact that, against all reason, he’d gone out of his way to leave a warning-sign out for the convenience of his only rival on his side of the moon. 

Maybe he slept easier  _ because _ he’d left out a warning-sign for his only rival on his side of the moon. 

When he pulled on his jumpsuit and lifted the hatch of the pod late the next morning, after indulging in a very lazy breakfast and three chapters of a book he’d read so often the spine was cracked beyond repair, he was perplexed to find a rough bundle of wildflowers tied to the leg of the pod. Ezra stared. A twig snapped somewhere in the forest, and he flinched, his hand falling to his thrower… but nothing happened. No one emerged to ambush him. He forced himself to relax, carefully untying the knotted twine that held the bunch together. 

He laughed softly to himself and climbed back into the pod to stick them in an old coffee tin filled with water. An unfamiliar feeling rose in his chest when he breathed in the fresh scent of them. Curiosity, perhaps? Intrigue? 

There was, whether he was willing to admit it or not, a bit of a spring to his usually-weary steps when he set out to prospect for the day. He’d had fellow merchants of fortune offer to buy him drinks before, back when he spent more time in station saloons, but they were always a means to an end. He’d never been on the receiving end of a bouquet of flowers. 

It was a few days after that before he saw any sign of her at all. He was stooped over a gnarled root-cluster when he heard a rustle, and he turned, expecting a deer or rabbit; he did not expect to see  _ her,  _ standing bold as brass in the light of day. Ezra stood. 

“What a serendipitous meeting; I was beginning to wonder if you’d given up and headed back to the comforting bosom of civilization.” He leaned against his shovel. If she made a move for a weapon, he would be ready, even if the charming smirk on her lips compelled him to lower his guard. “Miss…?”

“Artemesia.”

_ Artemisia. A good name for a warrior-queen, exiled to the wilderness. Oh, Kevva, I’ve been out in the Reach too long. She’s only a woman. An exquisite specimen of the feminine form, but— _

“And yours?” she asked. “You are going to introduce yourself, aren’t you? It’s only fair.”

“Ezra,” he replied, making a teasing half-bow of obeisance. “At your service.”

“Oh, I doubt that, Ezra. How’s the hunting been treating you?”

“I have  _ no _ doubt that you’re well-aware of my progress, given how you’ve been shadowing me for nearly two weeks.” Ezra looked her up and down, noting the obviously-heavy pouch tied to her waist. “You have been doing well for yourself, I take it? Scavenging in my wake?”

Her hand moved to her belt - worryingly close to her thrower, but her fingers merely rested on the pouch. “‘We are all but humble merchants of Mighty Fortune,” quoth she, “‘ever-eager to face Kevva’s Test on distant moons.’”

Ezra considered her anew.  _ “The Lay of Ketling-Kol? _ A classic. And, if I am remembering my verses correctly, the heroine of that particular ballad was also named Artemisia.”

She smiled - a tense, half-deprecating sort of thing, but a smile, nonetheless. “My mom liked that one.”

“Ah.” After so many months wanting for conversation, Ezra found his facility of speech sorely impeded. A mutually-familiar quotation was always a safe bet, he decided. “‘Seek fortune elsewhere, weary wanderer; death and despair wait upon these moors.’”

Her smile widened. “These aren’t exactly  _ moors, _ Ezra.”

“That’s true. The dangers are undeniably reminiscent, though. I expected you to be in a viper-pit, by now.”

“If you’re hoping I’ll end up in a viper-pit,” Artemisia replied, “maybe you should stop flagging them for me.”

Ezra laughed to hide his embarrassment.  _ Of course  _ she’d noticed. He’d done it so that she  _ would _ notice. Why, then, did he feel so self-conscious about the whole situation? He supposed he’d never imagined they’d actually have a friendly conversation. Was that what this was? Friendly conversation?

She took a step back, then another, her smile taking an apologetic turn. He couldn’t fault her for that; he wouldn’t want to turn his back on her at such close range, either. Friendly conversation aside, they were near enough that neither would have to be particularly good with a thrower to hit their target. “See you around, brown-eyes,” she said, and then she was gone, swallowed up by the tall ferns. 

Ezra stood up a little straighter. When was the last time someone had even looked him in the eyes, aside from attempts to intimidate him? Artemisia hadn’t said it with the aggression of other prospectors; she’d said it teasingly, as if they were bantering in a tavern on some relatively-civilized world. Cynicism suggested that it was a calculated move on her part. It could be that she assumed he’d be less likely to kill and rob someone who’d quoted poetry at him and remarked on the color of his eyes. 

Still, it was a nice break from the usual monotony. If there was a little bit of a spring in his step, a little flutter in a heart that had been too disappointed and too tired to bother feeling much at all for many years, was that really such a bad thing? Ezra decided that it wasn’t. 

He wouldn’t mind having more poetry quoted at him. 

So, the next time he encountered a nearly-hidden pit - deep and dangerous, but surprisingly void of vipers - the stick he left as a marker for Artemisia had bright white-and-scarlet tree-lilies affixed to it. It was a practical solution, he reasoned; he didn’t have endless handkerchiefs lying around to use as warning signs for any scavenger following in his footsteps. 

A few days later, he found a small package wrapped in waxed paper sitting on one of his pod’s ladder rungs. He cut open the twine and carefully unwrapped it, completely puzzled by its appearance.  _ The Lay of Ketling-Kol.  _ It was an old copy, clearly weathered from many years of travel. The fluttering feeling in his chest made a reappearance. 

A pressed flower held a page marked. His eyes scanned the page, his pulse speeding. He’d forgotten the line, but he remembered it as he glanced over familiar verses, and when he finally found it, he smiled. 

_ ‘Beneath the boughs and moons so bright; I’ll steal his heart, my brown-eyed knight.’ _


End file.
